THE GOLDEN HOUR

Matt Stock

Matt describes his technique akin to “…sculpting with darkness as a medium. I chip away the shadows to reveal light and dimension the way a sculptor chips away at a block of marble to reveal the sculpture within.”

Matt Stock is a Florida native who finds inspiration in the natural elements of water, earth, and sky. Also drawn toward untold stories and subjects that are looking for a voice and a champion, he works cooperatively with national and state parks, non-profit organizations, and historical societies to raise awareness about the world around us. Matt Stock has been recognized by his peers being juried into national art exhibitions and earning him several international awards.

Matt’s area of expertise is in creating hyper-realistic nighttime photographs with a technique called Painting with Light in the Dark® in which he and his team meticulously illuminate a scene on location using light sources ranging from the Milky Way and full moon to specialized lighting tools through the course of many hours and hundreds of individual exposures. He then digitally weaves elements of each of these exposures into a single luminous composition in post-production using Adobe Photoshop. Everything seen in his work was captured in real time and on location. Some photographs can only happen once a year, some even less frequently.